After the first wave of Covid, I had coffee with a friend.
We hadn't talked in a long time so the conversation was flowing pretty well. We discussed spirituality and the paradox of wanting to gain full acceptance while, at the same time, striving to create a great business and live a full life. After our discussion, she told me that there was one thing that had helped her to deal with these paradoxes: Breath Awareness.
It's similar to meditation, but you just do some breathing exercises instead. I'll send you a 30 day challenge that I'm doing and you'll see for yourself!
She sent me a link to a series of short videos made by the beautiful folk at YagoYoga where, for 30 days, they offered you a short challenge in order to increase the awareness of your breath. I decided I was going to start the challenge the next day.
And I did. For 2 days straight. Then, the 3rd one slipped and I just forgot about it until a month ago, when, out of nowhere, I remembered that challenge. I did the 30 days and really loved it. But I digress.
You see, today I want to explore how this challenge taught me a couple of things about content creation.
30 Days, 30 Videos...how many people?
As I’m writing this, the first video in the challenge has 22 thousand views.
This is the video where Roy, the facilitator, explains what's about to happen in the next 30 days. The structure, the challenges, everything. It has a beautiful background, HD video and audio...good quality content.
However, the second video drops down to 6435 views. The retention rate is lower than 30%, just from one video to another! Now, there's a couple of things that can justify these results:
People watch Day 1 and they don't like it.
People watch Day 1 and, even though they like it, they don't want to do it at that moment.
People watch Day 1, start doing the challenge, fail, and try again (my case), contributing to a great amount of views on the first video
As we progress in the videos, things don't get better.
Even though the content really helps you to increase awareness of your breath, people keep dropping off.
Day 3 has 4700 views.
Day 4, 4000 views.
Day 5, a sudden rise, 5000 views.
And then, it comes day 6.
Now, after years studying personal development, practicing different challenges and habits and helping others to do the same, there's one pattern I've noticed.
Most people who want to start a new habit, a new challenge, a new lifestyle, tend to start it at the beginning of the month or on a Monday, at the beginning of the week. Humans like order and "syncing" beginnings helps them achieve this unconscious need (think about it, has it happened to you?).
So, let us imagine that Jack, a normal person, decided to start being more aware of his breath. He starts this challenge on a Monday, and when he gets to day 5 the week is over and it's time to relax on the weekend.
By Saturday, he gets up later than usual and instead of doing the challenge in the morning, he'll do it around lunchtime. But life gets in the way and suddenly he's watching Netflix. I'll do it after this episode - Jack says to himself. But then, he forgets about it, the day goes by and Jack doesn't do it. He drops the challenge and finds some internal justification to make him feel less bad about failing.
Now, I know this is just a hypothetical scenario, I have no idea if this is the truth or not but I'll stand my ground. I'm willing to defend that most of the people who watched this challenge [and others] are "Jacks": people that started on a Monday, got to day 6, a Saturday, and dropped the challenge.
And that's why Day 6 has 54 views. From 22k to 54 in only six days. And after Day 6 there's not a single video that has more than 60 views. The retention rate is lower than 1%!
Why?!
The content is amazing! They were consistent, producing and putting out a video every day. They even offered a zoom session to the ones who finished the challenge!
This got me thinking about how we, as content creators, can better structure our content in order to face one of the biggest challengers in our journey:
The mind of our audience.
Here are 3 ideas that I believe can help you create better content that will get better engagement.
1 - Being Consistent just for the sake of it ain't enough
Let's start with this idea, that consistency brings you results. I'm sorry to tell you that it isn't true. Being consistent is definitely important. But it's not enough.
When I was in college studying jazz, I challenged myself to write a jazz composition based on every book I read.
Back then I was reading a lot.
Like, a lot.
1, 2 or sometimes even 3 books a week which meant that, by the end of a given month, I had something like 4 -10 jazz tunes.
This made me a prolific composer and allowed me to get ahead of my own peers in terms of composition. After all, every week I was trying to convey feelings throughout melody and harmony.
However, after an initial boost [4, 5 months] I realized that I wasn't enjoying my own tunes. They were losing quality. So after a couple of weeks wrestling with this feeling, I stopped the challenge.
From there on I just wrote music that I knew I had to. Not because of any challenge, but because that musical idea had to come to life, it had to be shared with someone. I started writing 3 tunes a month, sometimes even less.
"Consistency" was gone, but my music was better than ever.
There's some tunes that I know by heart even after 4 years, because I remember the feeling I got when I was composing them. I was emotionally engaged at a deeper level.
Now, don't get me wrong, consistency is amazing. But it won't bring you the results you want by itself and won't allow you to serve your audience at a deeper level.
I remember reading a tweet by Benjamin explaining why he didn't write a newsletter every week. Even though it would increase his consistency and the amount of material he has to show, it would decrease the quality of his writing.
So, you can put X tweets a day, X videos a week, but remember that quality will always win when faced with quantity.
2 - Understanding your target audience and their behavior patterns
We spend way too much time in our lives thinking that everyone around us shares our mental models and beliefs. Spoiler alert: They don't. That's why having a persona and making sure you are constantly in touch with your audience is fundamental.
Trying to understand some behavior patterns may help you design content that is aligned with those same patterns, making it easier for people to watch it.
When I started doing some public speaking at schools, I remember noticing a pattern in every kid. When I was about to start my presentation, they would immediately assume that it was going to be boring. After all, I was being introduced by their teachers. Once I started speaking though, they would realize that they could actually learn something! But that initial barrier was always there, creating resistance that slowed down my impact.
Then, one day, I was speaking at this school where the teacher was actually a friend of mine and I decided to do something different. After being introduced by my friend I told the kids:
Look, I'm just gonna pretend that X [my friend] isn't here, because sometimes, teachers don't like what I say.
They were completely hooked.
99% of the teachers that invited me to their classes to talk about decision making gave me great feedback. Teachers liked my message.
But the fact that I told the students that their teachers may not like it allowed me to get their full attention from the very beginning of the presentation and to have a greater impact.
The only way I was able to do it though, was through observing and looking for patterns in my audience. Do the same and adjust your content accordingly.
3 - The 2 Driving Forces
I remember listening to this old .mp3 file by Tony Robbins that changed the way I say everything in my life. In it, he said that everything we do as humans is either to:
attract pleasure or
push away pain;
Ever since I heard that, it became impossible not to notice it everywhere around me.
This applies to everything we do, including consuming content. And this is where things get interesting.
Even before starting to consume your content, your audience already has a question in their unconscious mind.
Is the pleasure of consuming this greater than the pain of starting it?
Will reading this newsletter/watching this video/engage in this challenge make me feel better than other things which I can use to occupy my time? That's why we save things to consume later.
In that moment, engaging in that activity would bring us more pain than keep doing what we were doing. However, not having access to that content also gives us pain. Hence, saving a lot of articles and having dozens of different tabs on your browser.
So, when we produce content, we must answer the question: is the pleasure of finishing this piece of content greater than the pain of starting it?
Let's go back to the fine fellows at YagoYoga.
I bet that some people didn't start the challenge, after seeing the first video, simply because they didn't believe that they would be able to discipline themselves for 30 days.
By the way, after coaching hundreds of people, you would be shocked to know how many of them don't have enough self-belief to do something everyday for 15 days straight, let alone 30!
So if we're going to create better content we must be sure that we eliminate the maximum amount of pains that our audience may feel. I have no idea which are your audience's pains, that's something you must find out. I can, however, give an example of a pain that our audience had.
Imagine you're building a digital school to high school students, teaching them soft and meta skills. One of the pains we had to deal with was the fact that learning may not be seen as "hip" by others peers.
You ask any high school student if they agree with this, and unless you've built a good relationship with them, with lots of empathy, you'll get a no for an answer. However, after a couple of talks with students we realized that some of them were afraid to engage with our content because they didn't want to be seen as "nerds".
We solved this by doing some in-person talks with a couple of different classes. Once they understood the kind of thing we were trying to build, through humor, practical tips that they could use and a language that they were comfortable with, this fear went away.
So you must find the pain points of your audience and plan accordingly. This will get you far ahead as opposed to just posting content every week or every day.
If you're actually creating a challenge here's a couple of extra tips:
If I fail, I'll want to quit, so make it easier for me to succeed. Jim Kwik had this idea of S3 [Small Simple Steps]. Give me small, easy things that, once put together, will have a great impact.
Build a relationship throughout the videos. Be more personal as the challenge progresses, even if you'll never see me live. This will make me feel that we're developing a relationship and will be one more pleasure to have in mind, every time I have to decide between doing your challenge or not.
Give mental models that will help me to see small wins. By doing this, you'll increase the amount of pleasure I associate with your challenge.
"Now, we go and do it"
As I say to all students that work with us, information is worthless unless you practice upon it. So if you have found any of this content useful, please put it into practice and let me know how it went.
We need a world with better content, with information that makes us better human beings.
These 3 ideas are tools that you can use to break the barrier of resistance and make more people change their lives with your own content.
I wish you the best,
João
PS: I'm always searching for new people and projects that want to have a great impact! Feel free to contact me on Twitter and let me know what you're building.